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Beauty

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About 50 years ago when Kathy and I were first interested in learning about sufism it was recommended that we read The Last Barrier by Reshad Feild. (This title is the first part of his captivating autobiographical trilogy that was followed by To Know We're Loved – The Invisible Way, and then Going Home – The Journey of a Travelling Man) and several other books. In these books he frequently quotes his teacher Hamid who was later identified as Blunt Rauf a Turkish-British mystic and spiritual teacher.

One quote from The Last Barrier that has remained with me to this day is as follows:

"The sole purpose of love is beauty. Living should be an act of love. Fill everyone around you with the freedom of that spirit. Never be controlled by your passions, but dare to live passionately. For until you come to love completely you will never come to know God."
~ Bulent Rauf (Hamid)

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It might be said that beauty and love are inseparable; each is capable of evoking or exposing the experience of the other. The mystical experience recognizes this love/beauty beyond our cultural expectations, in a variety of physical reality - from a rose to a corpse to cow dung. Perhaps you find beauty in the arts or nature, in newborns or innocents, in athletics or power or humility or truth. Love and beauty are both experiences of the heart, both ordinary and extraordinary, inseparable really. As a mirror of your soul, beauty reminds us of our own beauty and the mystery beyond it all.

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Quotes

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Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

~ St. Augustine

When you live free from all reaction you find yourself in a new dimension that is always interesting. In life you must make a choice and the choice should be to live in beauty. So become more acquainted with beauty.
Consciousness is not divided, it is the timeless source from which the waking, dreaming and sleeping states emanate and into which they are reabsorbed. It is the background to the thinking state. Consciousness always is.
~ Jean Klein

 

Clear mind, the supreme good, is like water. It is transparent, it sparkles, it flows everywhere without obstruction. It is beautiful and profound, the nourishment that feeds all things internally, without trying to. 

~ Byron Katie

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It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.

~ Henry David Thoreau

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Beauty is God's desire fulfilled in the objective world. 

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

It is only the absence of desire that makes you happy, so allow no desire to rise. Just allow yourself to be dissolved by Love. When there is no desire there is Love and Beauty.
~ Papaji

Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this -- and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others. Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms."
~ Osho

I have come to drag you out of yourself and take you in my heart. I have come to bring out the beauty you never knew you had, and lift you like a prayer to the sky.
~ Rumi

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and ...to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
~ Albert Einstein
 

I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

~ Walt Whitman

Kneel only to Truth....follow only Beauty...obey only Love.
~ Kahlil Gibran

 

All your seriousness is about sand castles. And you yourself will leave them one day, trampling them down, and you will not look back. The people who take it seriously miss the beauty of playfulness.

~ Osho

True nature, the Essence of the soul, is valuable, is worthy of appreciation and love, not because it gives her something, not because it adds to her, not because it liberates her, but because it is beautiful. Its value is in its beauty and perfection. Its truth is its value, and this truth is the essence of all beauty. The beauty of a form turns out to be this transparency to true nature. The more a manifest form expresses and embodies true nature with its timeless features, the more the eyes of the soul behold it as beautiful. Beauty is a reflection of truth, and truth is ultimately true nature. And the dimension of true nature that reveals this essential beauty is that of divine love.
~ A,H, Almaas

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.
~ Nisargadatta

Although a human activity may have a number of complicated motives, some of which are base and gross, it is the aspiration towards divinity, the desire towards beauty, which is its soul, its life, and its reality. And it is in proportion to the degree of strength or weakness of his aspiration towards beauty that man's ideal is great or small, and his religion is great or small.
~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you. The future will take care of itself.
~ Paramahansa Yogananda

 

How did the rose

Ever open its heart

And give to this world

All its Beauty?

It felt the encouragement of light

Against its Being.

Otherwise, we all remain

Too frightened.

~ Hafez

The best metaphor about the experience of consciousness is happiness. The sense of truth, love or beauty - what do these experiences have in common? When we experience truth, love or beauty, any of those, what they have in common is happiness. Happiness is the common denominator of consciousness.
~ Francis Lucille

 

Work on yourself; have compassion for yourself; allow yourself to be beautiful, and all the rest will follow.

~ Ram Dass

Just as the essence of all thought is understanding and the essence of all relationship or friendship is love, so the essence of all perception is beauty.
~ Ruppert Spira

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
~ Rumi

You Are Divinely Protected
Within you is unimaginable beauty. Always realize that you are divinely protected, divinely guided to your highest good.
Hand over your heart and soul to the power that knows the way. It will take over your life and adjust everything accordingly. And, like a flower blooming through no will of its own, your life will respond accordingly.
~ Robert Adams

The Beauty you Love is You
Do you know that feeling you get,
when it’s a beautiful day and so you go somewhere to be in nature?
And you are sitting there in the calm breeze and gazing at your favorite mountain,
or lake,
or river
or tree filled mossy patch
… and something comes over you …
It’s subtle at first like a little buzz,
but soon it starts to get louder,
as if begging to be noticed.
It reaches into you,
all the way in,
deeper than words ever can.
It soothes all worries and starts to move you
and expand you.
And before you know it you are smiling a soft smile,
knowing that everything is going to be all right.
And as your lips curl into that gentle softened expression of peace,
it’s as if nature gives you that same look back.
And you share in it for a moment.
A secret, silent knowing;
that no matter how it all plays out,
everything is already in the right place.
And do you know what’s amazing about this feeling?
The most amazing thing is that it’s You.
Nature’s beauty is a perfect reflection of what you really are,
what you’ve always been
and what you will always be.
Reflecting back to you
Your pureness,
Your ease,
Your grace.
She is unapologetically flourishing,
because she doesn’t know anything about
holding back.
And somewhere in you is that same beauty,
unable to not shine.
We only think we can hide it,
but nature knows our real Truth.
And that’s the secret we share with her
on those beautiful days.
When you remember that the beauty you love,
is what you really are.
~ Christine Wushke

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Where there's an ego there is purpose. And when there is no sense of "I" there is no purpose. Life is purposeless. There's only beauty in living in the eternal. If you believe you are the individual "I" you are isolated from your surroundings, and this isolation brings feelings of insecurity, fear and anxiety. Then you look for goals. You worry and anticipate. Life doesn't need a reason to be. That is its beauty.

~ Jean Klein

 

You don't have to be perfect, you don't have to have good health, you don't have to do it before your body dies, it's got nothing to do with anything: it's right now, place your attention behind any stories, any concepts. From there, freedom arises, beauty arises, love arises.

~ Jac O’Keeffe

 

You need not drop the ego. Just look in, search for where it is -- first find it. Don't worry about self-nature right now. Just go in, search for the ego, and you will not find it; instead you will find your self-nature, luminous, fragrant like a lotus flower. One never comes across such beauty anywhere else. It is the most beautiful experience of life. And once you have seen your own lotus of light, your own lotus blossoming, the ego is finished forever.

~ Osho

 

Love showers the seeds of beauty 

which bloom to the myriad flowers. 

Reds, blues, yellows, oranges; of many petals or few. 

Would one place any above the other? 

Yet, inclined toward the rose, or the violet; 

the attar and the scent lures one to their source. 

Find the scent of goodness. Taste it. Become it. 

Let it go and a finer scent comes wafting apparent. 

The scent and the taste lead one to the shower. 

The shower toward its source.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

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Without mind, there is no variety, discrimination or differentiation; we see no form and hence, no beauty. The mind is the creator of form, the creator of beauty, and understanding is that process of creation, of unfoldment. So, the fulfillment of our lives is to see life objectively, to see what is really there. To know, for example, that life is the expression and fulfillment and celebration of beauty. This is what we are here for. We're not here for anything else. Everyone wants this life of fulfillment, beauty and harmony. Most people want to reach it without going through the process of understanding. They want it to come from someone else through some magical transmission. They don't want to do it by understanding. But the process is understanding, and can happen in no other way.

A.H. Almaas

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Nothing can happen more beautiful than death.

~ Walt Whitman

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There is a beautiful creature living

in a hole you have dug,

so at night I set fruit and grains and little pots of wine and milk

beside your soft earthen  mounds,

and I often sing to you,

but still, my dear, you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with someone 

who is hiding inside

of you.

We should talk about this problem,

otherwise I will never

leave you alone!

~ Hafez

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Bliss is Within. That you are.

Truth is Within. That you are.

Beauty is Within. That you are.

Love is Within. That you are.

This is addressing to your own Self.

~ Papaji

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The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.

~ Rumi

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